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Abstract

Our work has a two-fold general objectives: on the one hand, we wish to describe the mobile commerce environment and, on the other hand, to establish the determinants of the mobile consumer behavior. To achieve our objectives, first, we describe the concept of mobile commerce, constraints and benefits. Second, we study the determinants of mobile commerce adoption. Third, we focus on the determinants of mobile consumer satisfaction and loyalty. Finally, we summarize future avenues of investigation in a research agenda.

Mobile Commerce: Is It An Extension Of E-Commerce?

The name “M-Commerce” arises from the mobile nature of the wireless environment that supports mobile electronic business transactions. Devices, such as smartphones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), pagers, notebooks, and even automobiles, can already access the Internet wirelessly and utilize its various capabilities, such as e-mail and Web browsing, (Coursaris and Hassanein, 2002). Previous studies have defined m-commerce as an extension of e-commerce (Niranjanamurthy et al., 2013; Ngai and Gunasekaran, 2007; Varshney and Vetter, 2002; Wei et al., 2009). In these works, the m-commerce is comparable to e-commerce, except the transactions in m-commerce are conducted wirelessly using a mobile device (Lee and Benbasat, 2004). Hence, m-commerce refers to commerce activities via mobile devices. According to Coursaris and Hassanein (2002), differences between the m-commerce and the e-commerce rely on the mode of communication, the types of Internet access devices, the development languages, communication protocols, and the enabling technologies used to support each environment.

On the other hand, Feng, Hoegler, and Stucky (2006) claimed that m-commerce is much more than merely being an extension of e-commerce. According to them, considering m-commerce as an extension of e-commerce is too reductionist as it is exclusively based on the medium and device. The authors stated that m-commerce has different interactions with users, usage patterns, and value chain, thus offering new business models that are not available to e-commerce (e.g. location-based marketing). In the same vein, for Paavilainen (2002), “mobile e-commerce” is a deceptive term because the business models and the value chain are not the same as e-commerce. M-commerce has distinctive attributes that provide consumers with values unavailable in conventional wired e-commerce, including ubiquity, personalization, flexibility, and dissemination (Chong, 2013; Mahatanankoon et al., 2005; Siau et al., 2001). Furthermore, in contrast to e-commerce, m-commerce has “revolutionized consumers’ self-perceptions by empowering them to voice their beliefs and preferences continuously and instantaneously” (Khansa et al., 2012, p. 45). M-commerce extends not only the benefits of the web but also allows for unique services and additional benefits when compared to traditional e-commerce applications (Mahatanankoon et al., 2005). M-commerce is “any transaction, involving the transfer of ownership or rights to use goods and services, which is initiated and/or completed by using mobiles access to wireless networks with the help of mobile devices” (Chan and Chong, 2013, p.443).